As a lifestyle blogger, you know what positive impact an aesthetically pleasing design can make — in all areas of life. When it comes to blog design, good design not only helps your blog stand out, it also gives you the pride and confidence to promote your brand and help your blog grow. A huge part of that is selecting the best fonts and colors for your lifestyle blog.
The tricky part is — though you appreciate good design, you’re not a web designer. Which means you can spend hours trying to find the perfect font and color combinations for your brand, only to feel like it’s not quite the right fit.
Not to mention, if you’re just starting out, you’re still getting clear on your brand! Your brand voice and aesthetic will develop over time — in the beginning, you’re really just guessing.
But here’s the thing: the time you spend playing with fonts and colors is time you’re not spending creating content. And content is what’s going to move your blogging journey forward.
Of course, you still want to put your best foot forward and make a good impression! In this post, we’ll guide you to select the best fonts and colors quickly and effectively, so you can get back to what matters most — your content.
Click a link below to jump to that section:
The Fundamentals of Selecting Fonts for Your Lifestyle Blog Design
Your lifestyle blog content is entirely made up of images and words. Think about the amount of visual space dedicated to text on your blog. From navigation menus to blog post titles and your written post content, text is a large presence in your lifestyle blog design.
That’s why font selection plays a huge role in visually communicating your blog’s personality, tone, and aesthetic. In other words, it’s a fundamental part of your blog brand! A good blog design can have a minimalistic black and white color scheme and still set the tone for your brand through fonts alone.
So let’s go over the fundamentals of selecting fonts for your new lifestyle blog so you can make the best first impression.
Choose fonts that are easy to read
The vast majority of the text on your site is functional, not decorative. Your readers will spend most of their time on your site, well, reading the text. So your number one priority is to choose fonts that are easy to read.
Most font sites provide a type tester that allows you to enter text, adjust the font size, and preview the text in that font. Be sure to test text that you’ll actually use on your site. If you’re selecting a font for blog post titles, enter one of your blog post titles to preview. If you’re selecting a font for body copy, enter a paragraph from one of your blog posts. Double-check that the fonts are easy to read before using them for your new blog design.
If you haven’t written any content yet, follow these steps to start your lifestyle blog. This includes defining your blog vision and writing your first posts, which will help you get more clear on what your font selection should communicate about your blog brand.
Limit your font selection
When it comes to font selection, keep it simple! The more fonts you choose, the more visually distracting it will be for your reader, and the less professional your design will look.
A good rule of thumb is to stick with four fonts or less: One for blog post and section titles, one for navigation and post entry meta (like the post date or category), one for body copy, and an optional fourth accent font for visual interest.
Keep in mind that one font can serve multiple purposes on your site. Consider using the same font family in different weights or styles to add visual interest but still keep your selection cohesive. For example, body copy fonts often also work well for navigation. Use all caps, add some letter-spacing, and select a heavier weight to visually distinguish body copy from navigation.
For body copy, stick with a serif or sans-serif font. Display fonts are great for titles — some fonts even have a corresponding display version that’s a bit more stylized and really stands out at larger sizes. Scripts or handwriting fonts are typically best used sparingly as accents to add visual interest, though some script fonts are easier to read and may work for titles.
Choose fonts that feel right to you
You don’t have to be a designer to understand how different fonts make you feel. Take a stop sign, for example. The font is large and bold, in a clean and minimal sans-serif font. It feels authoritative and signals something important that you need to pay attention to.
Now imagine if a stop sign used a handwritten script full of flourishes, like one you might find on a wedding invitation. It would feel inviting, and maybe a bit formal or fancy. And it sets a completely different tone that’s directly at odds with its purpose.
Every font conveys a message to you, whether you realize it or not. As you select fonts, go with your gut! Take a moment to really look at each of the characters and note any feelings that come up for you. Test out some words and phrases and evaluate if the style matches what you want for your brand.
We love Google Fonts for their large library of high-quality free fonts, and their flexible and comprehensive type tester.
The Art of Selecting Colors for Your Lifestyle Blog Design
Color is an incredibly powerful tool in design. The color scheme you select for your lifestyle blog design instantly sets the tone, mood, and overall vibe for your lifestyle blog. But it’s a tricky balance — you want your color scheme to support your content, not distract from it.
So let’s cover some tips on selecting colors for your lifestyle blog design that work for your brand and not against it.
Understand basic color theory
Color theory outlines the ways we can use color in design to set the right tone and convey the right message. At the center of color theory is the color wheel, which is essentially our compass for finding color combinations that work.
The color wheel is divided into warm and cool hues. Warm colors, such as reds, oranges, and yellows, can feel energetic, happy, or inviting. Cool colors, like blues, greens, and purples, can feel calm, relaxed, or steady.
There are three ways we use the color wheel in design to find colors that work together. Complementary colors, located opposite each other on the color wheel, create a bold contrast. Analogous colors, located next to each other, provide a more subtle blend. Triadic colors create a triangle on the color wheel for a more vibrant combination that’s still balanced.
Neutrals, including whites, grays, and blacks, serve as the backdrop for your color choices. They provide balance and allow your chosen hues to shine. Neutrals can also act as buffers, preventing overwhelming color combinations while enhancing readability.
Build your color palette
Now that you have a basic understanding of color theory, you can use it to start building your color palette. Remember that your photography will also add color to your design, so if your photography has a particular aesthetic or colors that you use often, you’ll want to keep that in mind as well. Again, your color palette should support your content, not distract from it.
A good rule of thumb is start with one main color and work from there. One color can take you far when you add in different shades of that color and mix in neutrals. If you’d like to add an accent color for more visual interest, look to your complementary colors for a pop of color, or your analogous colors for a more cohesive look.
If you’re struggling to create a color scheme, we love Coolors, a free online color scheme generator. You can input a color or two, lock those in place, and generate options for the rest of your color scheme by pressing the spacebar. You can also tweak your palette to increase or reduce hue, saturation, brightness, and temperature. Plus adjust individual colors to find lighter or darker shades of that color.
Another resource we love is 0to255. Enter a hex code, and it will show you a range of shades of that color, from lightest to darkest. We use this to find lighter shades of our main color scheme to use as background colors.
Experiment with your color palette
Once you have a rough color palette in place, you’ll need to experiment with where you use those colors on your blog design and adjust colors as needed. This is where 0to255 particularly comes in handy, as you may find you need to adjust a color to a slightly lighter or slightly darker shade to ensure good color contrast.
Your number one priority is to make sure that everything on your blog design is easy to read and navigate. With color, this means you want dark text on a light background, or vice versa. The most important areas for this are your post content, navigation bars, and buttons. This is where you want to add in darker or lighter shades of your main color, or mix in neutrals like black, gray, or white.
Your second goal with color is to draw attention to what’s important and help less important features fade more into the background. Use highly saturated or more vivid colors sparingly — these should be reserved for things you really want to call out, like a section title.
Once you’ve put your colors in place, take a step back and make sure nothing is too distracting. Ultimately, you want your content to stand out — not your blog design!
How to Select Fonts and Colors for Your Lifestyle Blog Design — Quickly and Effectively
As we’ve covered so far, there’s a lot to consider when selecting fonts and colors for your lifestyle blog design! So how do you make sure you’re making design decisions that will work for your brand and the message you want to communicate — without getting stuck searching for hours?
First, give yourself a time limit — a few hours at most. There are so many options out there, and you can and will spend more time than is necessary sorting through them all if you don’t set a deadline. Then, work your way through the steps below:
- Define 3-5 adjectives to describe your brand aesthetic.
- For each adjective, find at least 1-3 images that perfectly capture that adjective for you.
- Layout your inspiration images to create a brand moodboard to guide your decision-making. (Save time and create a Pinterest board!)
- List any trends that you notice from your moodboard. Are there any font styles you are drawn to? Which colors stand out the most?
- Open up Google Fonts and browse through the font library. Start by selecting a font for your post titles, then body copy and navigation. Add in an accent font if you like.
- Open up Coolors and start building your color palette. Click the camera icon, and you can upload an image from your moodboard and pull colors directly from it as a starting point.
- Once you have a general idea of the fonts and colors you’d like to use, start customizing your theme! Adjust things as needed until you’re happy with how it looks.
You will be tempted to keep tweaking your fonts and colors, but remember that done is better than perfect. You are much more critical of your own work than your readers are. As long as your blog provides an enjoyable experience for your readers, that’s what matters most!
A final reminder
You want a lifestyle blog you can be proud of and excited to work on, and a beautiful design is a huge part of that. Selecting the best fonts and colors for your lifestyle blog is central to a beautiful design.
As you choose fonts and colors for your lifestyle blog design, remember to put your content first. Simple and cohesive design choices will not only elevate the aesthetics of your blog but also enhance the reader experience
Remember, your blog brand is always evolving, and you can always update your blog design accordingly as your aesthetic and vision become more clear.
At EmPress Themes, we’re here to help! Our WordPress themes are built specifically for lifestyle bloggers, by lifestyle bloggers. They are made so you can easily swap out fonts and colors for your lifestyle blog and create a design that matches your brand aesthetic and feels tailor-made for you.
